South African Minister of State Security Dipuo Letsatsi-Duba makes it clear that while the Jewish community is under no particular threat, the department of state security takes seriously its mandate to protect the country’s citizens.

Lawyers are preparing criminal and civil charges following one of the darkest weeks of anti-Semitism in South Africa. There have been a slew of vile incidents that sent shock waves through the community.

The SA Friends of the Beit Halochem Zahal Disabled Veterans Organisation was established in Johannesburg in 1982, its primary goal being to help and support Zahal disabled veterans by raising funds to help them return and resume their normal lives as soon as possible.

Dr Ali Bacher, former South African cricket captain and administrator, was one of the five recipients of the 2018 Steve Tshwete Lifetime Achievement Awards at the SA Sport Awards held in Bloemfontein on Sunday night.

Devotion to the cause of the State of Israel flourishes in the most unlikely places, even in societies where the Jewish presence is small to non-existent. Such is the case in Mozambique, where the work of Beth-El Associacao Crista Amigos De Israel - Mozambican Christian Friends of Israel - testifies to how much can be achieved by those inspired by their Christian faith to promote the Israeli cause, despite adverse conditions.

JNF’s unique “Blue Boy Box” now lives at King David Linksfield Pre-Primary so that children of each generation learn the importance of tzedakah (charity or welfare). It is the responsibility of Jews all over the world to build Israel, develop it and nurture it as the home of the Jewish nation

“Knowledge is Light” was our school motto when I was a child in Durban. The importance of education was made clear to us from as far back as I can remember. It wasn’t taken for granted. A good education was a privilege.

Late on Tuesday, a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas went into effect. While at the time of writing the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) had still not confirmed the existence of such a truce, Israeli citizens living in the south of the country were told they could return home and to “normalcy”.

The Israeli gymnastics team was out in full force at 48th FIG Artistic Gymnastics World Championships that began at Aspire Dome in Doha, Qatar, on Thursday. There are five males and two females in the team headed by new Israeli sensation Artem Dolgopyat. The others are Alexander Shatilov, Ilan Korchak, Andrey Medvedev, and Michael Sorokine, while the women are Ofir Netzer and Meitar Lavy.

As I was heading home on Tuesday, I heard on ChaiFM that 460 rockets had been fired from Gaza into Israel since late Sunday. That is an outrageous number. If every one of them hit inhabited areas, thousands of Israelis would have been killed.

“The president is not directly responsible for acts of domestic terrorism, but he should be more careful with his language.” That’s the way the Economist headlined its report on the horrific Pittsburgh killings just more than two weeks ago.

With Prince William’s historic visit to Israel this week, all eyes have been trained on the Jewish capital. It may have taken 70 years, but the first official visit by a member of the British Royal family began in Israel on Monday, when William, the Duke of Cambridge, arrived in Tel Aviv.

Some 5 600 emissaries (shluchim) from Chabad-Lubavitch from all over the world gathered at the Pier 8 warehouse in Brooklyn, New York this week for the opening of their four-day annual international conference and banquet, 75 years after the arrival of the Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, from Europe.

“The greatness of our nation is that our people are great. We are a nation of heroes, of people with good and decent moral fibre who will not tolerate our country being plundered!” So said Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein in Pretoria this morning.“This is a struggle for accountability and justice,” Goldstein told the crowd (which included prominent Jewish CEOs like Adrian Gore, Stephen Koseff and Michael Katz). “This struggle is about sovereignty. The power of the people always triumphs in the end.”

A community that prays together

So much has happened in the year since last Rosh Hashanah. Many members of our community have celebrated wonderful simchas. And yet, at the same time, many have suffered much pain, some through the loss of loved ones, others through illness or other challenges.

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CHIEF RABBI WARREN GOLDSTEIN | Sep 14, 2017

To be part of community means that we share in and feel each other’s joy and pain. To be part of a community is to look around us and feel deep empathy with other people and what they are going through.

And especially, at this time of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, our Sages teach us that by connecting ourselves to community and connecting ourselves to the plight of others in kindness, we achieve great merit before Hashem.

We need to move beyond feeling for others to action, to doing something for them. By attending a simcha, such as a wedding, and dancing and fully participating, we create joy for the simcha families.

And at a time of loss or illness, when we visit, we bring the comfort of our presence and words to those who are in situations of pain. Let us all look out for opportunities to perform acts of kindness and to reach out to as many people as possible in our community to share with them what they are going through.

One of the most powerful things we can do for somebody else is to daven for them, to pray. We cannot underestimate the power of prayer. Our Sages teach us that G-d willingly gave us power to change the world through our prayers.

We can and must turn to Him for our every need and request. Each day at the end of the weekday Amidah, just before we take the three steps back, we have an opportunity to mention our own particular needs in our own words before G-d.

The Amidah covers all of the general needs of the individual and community and indeed the entire Jewish people and the world. But at the end of the Amidah we have the opportunity to ask for things specifically in our own words - and we should seize that opportunity. Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur are important times to pray for a good and sweet new year.

When we pray, we don’t only pray for ourselves, we pray for others. That is why all of our prayers are formulated in the plural, because we daven on behalf of everybody.

The experience of praying for others opens our hearts to them and demonstrates great kindness. We need to feel and think about the needs of others and to pray for them. In this spirit there will, please G-d, be a special unity prayer service for a good year for the community, taking place on the Fast of Gedaliah at Yeshiva College on Sunday, September 24.

It is an opportunity to come together in a true spirit of community unity, in a spirit of love and caring for one another, and in the spirit of deep empathy. It is an opportunity to pray for those who are sick, that they should be healed, to pray for the comfort of those who are in mourning and to pray for all, that the year ahead should be filled with simchas and nachas.

This is what it means to be part of a community. This is what it means to believe in the power of prayer. This is what true unity means. Let’s stand together. Let us all make an effort to attend this service, but most importantly of all, let us all make an effort to harness the power of prayer now during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and, indeed, throughout the coming year as a way of changing the world for the good.

May Hashem bless us all with a good and sweet year, filled with His abundant goodness.

The community unity prayer service will take place on Sunday September 24, at 17:15 at the Yeshiva College Shul.